Will Kentucky settle for uneven opportunities in science for its children?

On September 11, 2013 the Kentucky Legislature’s Administrative Regulations Review Subcommittee considers a regulation that makes the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) the only set of science standards for every public school in Kentucky. This vote on regulation 704 KAR 3:303 is crucial. A favorable decision on NextGen Science will likely doom thousands of Kentucky’s students to an incomplete science education that will almost certainly deny them a choice to advance into real careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Here’s what’s going on:

At a very basic level, the NGSS do not comply with the requirements for Kentucky’s new academic standards found in the 2009 Senate Bill 1 legislation.

A very key requirement in Senate Bill 1 says the revisions to the state’s academic standards will:

“Ensure that the standards are aligned from elementary to high school to postsecondary education so that students can be successful at each education level.”

This important requirement does not say Kentucky’s new education standards should only cover preparation of students for success in the lowest levels of nontechnical areas of higher education and non-college careers. Instead, Senate Bill 1 clearly requires education standards to cover all programs and career paths students might choose to follow. This includes full preparation, if the student chooses, for those programs that lead to the most demanding courses of study that our postsecondary system offers. The education standards should consider the needs all of all students, not just those pursuing the least rigorous careers.

The standards should insure our education provides students the choice, whether that is a career as a secretary or a career that requires advanced degrees in highly technical areas such as science or engineering. Those choices should not be limited simply because a student attends one of Kentucky’s less upscale school systems.

And, this is where the NGSS clearly, and by their own admission, absolutely fail to meet Kentucky’s statutory requirements.

In one of NextGen Science’s own documents called “Front Matter,” under the heading “What is Not Covered in the Next Generation Science Standards,” NextGen itself clearly admits:

“The NGSS do not define advanced work in the sciences. Based on review from college and career faculty and staff, the NGSS form a foundation for advanced work, but students wishing to move into STEM fields should be encouraged to follow their interest with additional coursework.”

What, exactly, is included in what NextGen Science considers “Advanced Work” subjects? The Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s recent critique of the NextGen Science Standards provides answers. NextGen Science omitted much of what students would receive in a high school chemistry and physics course. Basically, this includes the last two years of high school science that any student who wants to pursue a STEM career, and, for that matter, any student who just wants a solid liberal education, is absolutely going to need.

Without this course material, not only are students left unprepared for STEM careers, but they will likely be non-competitive for entry in the nation’s more competitive postsecondary institutions. They most definitely will not be prepared for success in college, as Senate Bill 1 requires. That clearly makes 704 KAR 3:303 deficient, and it needs to go back to the Kentucky Board of Education for a lot more work.

By the way, adopting NextGen Science may actually cause a further deterioration of already limited opportunities for many Kentucky students to go on to careers in science and technology. Click the “Read more” link to learn how that could happen.

NextGen Science Standards actually stop defining science course requirements at about the 10th grade level, which is where high school biology is usually offered. If these standards are adopted, Kentucky’s education leaders won’t be paying any attention to the finishing coursework needed by students who want to go on to many higher institutions of learning. Kentucky’s education leaders will have absolutely no testing information about how those high end high school courses function in the school systems that might choose to continue offering high school physics and chemistry.

By the way, I was recently told by one of the heads of the physics department at one of Kentucky’s leading universities that somewhere around 30 Kentucky school districts don’t even offer a course in high school physics today. When I tried to confirm that statistic with the Kentucky Department of Education, I was told the department didn’t even have that information. So, no one is paying attention to high end high school science right now, either. If NextGen Science is adopted, that unsatisfactory situation will not change.

Here is a likely scenario if the Administrative Regulations Review Subcommittee does not make the obvious choice to find 704 KAR 3:303 deficient: current inequities in opportunity for students across Kentucky to go into STEM careers will continue and grow worse.

Under NextGen Science Standards, NO district in Kentucky would ever have to offer physics or chemistry. These are expensive courses to operate due to the labs required. Very soon, as our school systems continue to complain about funding shortfalls, the first courses to get the axe will likely be those “Advanced Work” science courses that no one in Frankfort’s education establishment seems to want to pay any attention to, let alone include in their science standards.

Thus, 704 KAR 3:303 could create a situation where even school systems that currently offer high school chemistry and physics stop doing so. That will reduce the opportunity for more students in Kentucky to ever enter STEM careers.

Ironically, while NextGen Science claims its goal is to encourage more students in lower grades to look forward to going into science careers, in the end NextGen creates the unintended consequence of dashing students’ hopes when they find out their public high school won’t ever prepare them fully for such options.

The bottom line here is simple. I hope the members of the Administrative Regulations Review Subcommittee recognize the obvious failure of Next Generation Science Standards to comply with Senate Bill 1 and send the deficient 704 KAR 3:303 back to the Kentucky Board of Education to fix those deficiencies. This is not what the legislature voted for in 2009.

Ladies and gentlemen of the legislature, the Kentucky Supreme Court decided in 1989 that the ball on education stops in your court. Right now, the ball from the science game is in your court, but it isn’t properly inflated. The best interests of Kentucky’s students demand that you kick that under-filled ball back to the Kentucky Board of Education for more work. Because if you decide to play the NextGen Science Standards game, the futures of many Kentucky students will continue to fall flat.